ICEYE

Satellite Description

As of June 2023, 27 X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites have been launched for the ICEYE constellation. ICEYE will continue to grow its constellation capacity in specialised orbital planes designed to provide persistent monitoring capabilities and high resolution view of the Earth’s surface.

The ICEYE vision is to bring a new service to the market with an emphasis on superior reliability, a vastly higher rate of revisits to individual locations, and an unprecedented objectivity. The service is based on a completely new satellite and sensor design, leveraging recent advancement in various technologies and the New Space approach.

Observation Scenario

• Swath width: Depends on acquisition mode (see Sensor Characteristics)

• Orbit: Sun-synchronous

• Inclination: 97.7°

• Altitude: 560 – 580 km

Sensor Characteristics

Acquisition modes:

• • Strip: Ground swath is illuminated with a continuous sequence of pulses while the antenna beam is fixed in its orientation. The beam is pointed off to the side of the satellite at an angle broadside to the satellite flight path. This results in a long image strip parallel to the flight direction.
• • Spot: The radar beam is steered to illuminate a fixed point. This increases the illumination time and the length of the synthetic aperture, and it improves azimuth resolution.
• • Scan: Uses the phased array antenna to create multiple beams in the elevation direction. This beam steering means that points on the ground are not illuminated for as long, which reduces the resolution of a Scan product compared to Spot or Strip modes. This Terrain Observation by Progressive Scan (TOPS) technique is used to improve the overall image quality.
• • Spot Extended Area (SLEA): Images a larger area than the standard Spot mode by pointing the satellite at a location that is further away. This spot is seen to “slide” over the ground which is why it is also known as Sliding Spot mode.
• • Dwell: Very long spot mode SAR collection with the satellite staring at the same location for up to 25 seconds. This yields a very fine azimuth resolution and highly-reduced speckle.

Spatial Resolution

Ground range and azimuth resolutions are listed here:

• • Strip: 3 x 3 m
• • Spot: 1 x 1 m
• • Scan: < 15 x 15 m
• • SLEA: 1 x 1 m
• • Dwell: 1 x 1 m

Temporal Resolution

1 – 22 days.

Data Products

SLC complex images – Contain pixels that have both amplitude and phase values. They are single-look images produced at full resolution and are projected in the inclined direction of illumination, called the slant plane. The pixels are aligned perpendicular to the sensor flight track, they are spaced equidistant in azimuth and in slant range.

GRD amplitude images – Have brightness values but no phase data. They are “multi-looked” to reduce the grainy effect of speckle, at the cost of slightly lower resolution. Amplitude images are projected on an ellipsoid model of the ground surface: the resulting product has approximately square spatial resolution and equal pixel spacing.

In both complex and amplitude images the native sensor geometry of range and azimuth is maintained and no image rotation to a map coordinate system is performed.

Format: ICEYE data are stored and delivered in HDF5 files (SLC Complex data) and GeoTiff files (GRD Amplitude data).

Archive Availability

For scientific research and application development, ESA is offering access to the full archive and new tasking of ICEYE data upon submission and acceptance of the project proposal.

The following collection is available:  ICEYE full archive and tasking: Level 1 SLC and GRD products

ESA offers registered users the access to the Online Dissemination server to the following data collections:  ICEYE ESA archive

Data Continuity

In 2023, ICEYE launched 10 new satellites. ICEYE plans to have launched 13 new satellites by the end of 2024. It also aims to launch 10-15 new satellites annually from 2025 onwards. For further reading on ICEYE, see https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/missions/iceye.